


Something familiar

by stuckwithminusharry



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Cheesy, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Fluffy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-War, Quiet, The Burrow, angsty fluff, post-war angst, post—hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 19:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7983259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuckwithminusharry/pseuds/stuckwithminusharry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And still, there's something familiar. Something, even now, that feels the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something familiar

**Author's Note:**

> Two things in advance:
> 
> Number one - this little fanfic (drabble? oneshot? short story? what are they called these days?) is based on slash built around slash inspired by a beautiful piece of fanart entitled "Weary", which was created by a talented, talented person you might know as burdge, who also happens to be one of my favourite Hinny artists, well, EVER. Please have a look at it here before you start reading:
> 
> http://burdge.deviantart.com/art/weary-197206590
> 
> Number two - there is a fine line between “Perfectly Reasonable Amount Of Cheesiness” and “Ungodly Amount Of Cheese, All Hope For Non-Cheesiness Most Definitely Lost, I'm Literally Not Even Trying Anymore”. I know that for a fact. I crossed that line a long time ago.

The sky is the colour of ripe peaches today.

It reminds Harry of lighter days, and easier days – it reminds him of the flowers drying on The Burrow's wooden kitchen table and Ron's oldest Chudley Cannons t-shirt and Ginny's cheeks after a Quidditch match, all at once.

(If things had gone a little differently, he'd have been happy to be back. Apart from everything else, he's missed The Burrow.)

But today is not one of these days (lighter days, and easier days – days as light as Quidditch in the backyard and Arnold's magenta fur between his fingers) – and maybe he is glad that this one, too, is coming to an end now. He'll try and sneak upstairs and hide in Ron's room, bury his face in his pillow, and pretend to be asleep until everyone else is.

“We're just trying to help”, Ron told him a few days ago. A single sentence in the darkness of their shared bedroom.

Harry spends most nights staring at Ron's ceiling, wide-eyed, hands shaking – listening to Pigwidgeon zoom around the room in circles, wondering why he's seeing dead faces in the dark when, really, he's just staring at Ron's ceiling. And exhausted though he is – these days, he's exhausted all the goddamn time –, he just can't seem to fall asleep.

At least, when he squeezes his eyes shut and fakes slow, steady breaths, he doesn't have to talk to them: He doesn't have to see their weary faces and he doesn't have to reply when they tell him they're just trying to help. So for the time being, pretending to be asleep is enough.

(He's sorry – he's so, so sorry for causing them even more sorrow, for that, and a million other things – but when they tell him they're just trying to help, and when they ask if he's alright, he doesn't know what to say. And he's not sure he really wants anyone else to say anything at all, either.)

So he stays in his hiding place, hunched over on a wooden bench – seventeen and war-worn and really not seventeen at all – and watches as the sun dyes the hills red.

It's only when he hears the soft crunching of grass beneath cautious steps that he wakes up from his trance. Aha, he thinks, in some far-away corner of his mind. They've found him, then.

Then, there's a deep breath, and a hand on his shoulder, and Harry catches a light, familiar scent – like the flowers on The Burrow's wooden kitchen table. Like a kiss on the cheek on the way to class.

He's been avoiding her the most. If he'd felt less empty, and less tired, maybe he would've laughed at his own naivety – he should have known she wasn't going to let him shut her out. And here she is: her hand is resting on his shoulder, limp maybe, and heavier than he remembers, but she's here. He doesn't look up at her – he knows what she looks like, and he doesn't think he can bear seeing her like that again. She's never looked this tired. Her face doesn't glow the way it used to.

He looks tired, too – She's seen him angry, and desperate, and frustrated, and drowning in guilt – but never empty. Never quite as hopeless as right now.

He doesn't move. Doesn't look up, doesn't speak – doesn't acknowledge she's here at all.

(She doesn't know this, but he doesn't feel like he's here at all, either.)

She bends down and presses a kiss to the top of his head – his hair is longer now, but it's still his hair, same mess as always – and then she just looks at him and decides she doesn't care what exactly they are, or what they're going to be. She watches him take a slow, shaky breath, then another ... and that's more than enough.

But he doesn't look up, doesn't speak; so she straightens her aching back, hand sliding off his shoulder, and decides to leave him be. If he ever does need her, she won't be far – but she's tired, too. Tired of trying, and tired of waiting.

(She needs him, too – more than he knows. But she isn't going to tell him that.)

But when she turns around, his hand wraps around her wrist – and his hand is shaking, not with shock, she realises, and not with sadness (although maybe it is that, too), but with the tremendous effort it has cost him to move, and is still costing him, just to hold on to her, and to not look away when she turns around to look at him.

It's weird, she thinks – he looks just like the boy he was when he left and then nothing quite like that boy, all at once. Nothing quite like she remembers him, and yet – still Harry. His face is still his face, bruised and battered and weary though it is. Somewhere underneath the scars she doesn't recognise and the shadows she doesn't want to see, his eyes and his lips and his chin and the mole on his cheek are still the same.

So she decides that, for the time being, she doesn't need him to speak – instead, she slides into his lap on the wooden bench, and buries her face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in.

He feels fragile next to her: She's afraid, momentarily, that the sheer weight of her body on his legs and the pressure of her arm around his shoulders might crush his bones. His hands are still shaking as they clutch to her, and he smells different, and he is so scrawny now that the bones of his shoulders dig into her arm as she wraps it around him.

And still, there's something familiar – there's something about the way he hides his face in her hair (breathing her in in return – like he was drowning, and she's his first, glorious breath of air) and in the way she fits into his lap so easily and the way he shivers when her fingers draw circles on the base of his neck – something about all of these things, that reminds her of the fleeting handful of summer days they spent together, all those centuries ago.

(Lighter days, and easier days – days as light as holding hands on the sunbathed Hogwarts grounds, and falling asleep on their favourite sofa in the unusual quiet of the common room after-hours.)

Something, even now, that feels the same.

He shifts slightly on the wooden bench, still holding on to her, despite the effort. Ginny rests her forehead in the crook of his neck – not talking, but not willing to let go, either. Glad, for now, that he just lets her sit next him.

It makes her overflow with gratitude, and incredulity, and relief – just the fact that his heart is beating, slowly, steadily, against the hand she has rested on his chest, that the vein on his neck is pulsing under her coarse fingertips; and that he is breathing, raggedly maybe, and shallowly, but definitely breathing, in her ear, and in her hair, and on her neck.

All of that is more than she's ever dared to hope for.


End file.
